Computers have steadily increased in popularity since their introduction into modern society. Computers and other types of digital electronics have simplified many tasks and facilitated new innovations that have changed the way we live. Today, with personal digital assistants (PDA's), cellular telephones, digital cameras, digital video recorders, digital music players and widespread Internet connectivity, people are recording more data than ever before to a wide variety of digital media storage devices. For example, many people have collections of digital photos, videos, songs, web pages, text files and other digital content stored on hard drives, CD's, DVD's, flash drives and other types of digital storage media.
Digital data storage media has many advantages. For example, all types of digital storage media allow for perfect reproduction and storage of digital files. Such files can be easily transferred to and from various digital storage media without any loss of data or quality. Another notable advantage of digital recordable media lies in its consumer appeal. From flash drives to hard drives to multi-layer DVD's, nearly all types of digital storage media have grown in capacity and substantially decreased in price. As a result, digital storage devices continue to gain popularity with consumers.
Optical storage devices have particularly grown in consumer use, in large part due to the ease of use and ubiquity of optical media players and recorders. Optical storage media can be categorized into two general types: commercially manufactured media in which the data layer is “stamped” using a laser-cut mold, and consumer-writable media in which the data layer is “burned” using a CD or DVD burner. Such consumer-writable media (e.g. CD-R/RW's, DVD±R/RW/RAM, etc.) is often used as long term data storage for photos, songs and other files.
Although such burnable optical media are widely considered to keep data forever, this is not the case. Such burnable optical media tends to degrade over time. For instance, in a typical write operation to an optical media, an energy source is focused on the media in a pattern of intense bursts, thus creating marks that can be interpreted as 1's and 0's. This “burning” process chemically alters the molecules of the optical media data layer, which is usually made of some type of metal alloy and an optical dye. Though the term “burning” implies some high level of permanence, the chemical alteration is, in fact, not permanent and actually degrades each time the media is read. Storing at high temperatures, high humidity, or high light levels can also degrade the media. Over time, the optical contrast between the marks representing 1's and 0's fades and the data becomes unreadable despite the confidence that consumers and even sophisticated technicians place in such media.